As the 21st century began, there was a gradual shift from Rock Music to other, more electronic-based genres in the world of Pop Music. This is both a good and bad thing in retrospect. All Saints was an all-girl group that marked that transition. They had some hit singles on their first and self-titled debut album, which was released back in 1997. For this time around, All Saints enlisted a bunch of different producers, including the legendary William Orbit; Mark “Spike” Stent; Karl “K-Gee” Gordon; Jonny Douglas; Cameron McVey; Paul Simm and Stuart Zender. The album was recorded at multiple locations and was released on 16 October 2000. All Saints were: Natalie Appleton; Nicole Appleton; Melanie Blatt and Shaznay Lewis. Let’s take a listen to this album, and hopefully, it will be a good listening experience.

1. Pure Shores is the hit from this album, made for the iconic 2000 film release The Beach starring Leonardo DiCaprio, which is definitely worth watching if you have not seen this film already. It launches into a dreamscape Pop Music piece with clean electric guitar parts, and subsonic bass. The singing and lyrics will blow your mind and take you to a better place than the mundane 9-5 Monday to Friday routine. Nonetheless, this sounds absolutely amazing and moving. The sounds on this song are just fantastic, with a good mixture of Pop/Rock sensibilities and awesome Ambient Music. This sounds absolutely fantastic. A chilled tune with some of the best and most recognisable sounds in the history of music. A very, very cool tune to listen to, All Saints, with the help of William Orbit has cracked onto something gorgeous and unique musically. The vocals in the second half are treated with a ton of sound effects, before returning to the verses. It quickly launches into a key change that sounds natural and great. This is a definite Pop Music classic that sounds awesome. Not bad for a release that was put out decades ago, by the time of writing. A fantastic song, listen to this when on holiday in either Bali or Thailand, it makes sense to hear it there.

2. All Hooked Up features Mark “Spike” Stent. It sounds completely different from the first track, complete with some Rap and Hip Hop influences. It quickly enters into an okay song, but far and away from being a classic tune. Still, the singing and instrumentation are absolutely superb and worth hearing. All Saints made some good Pop Music back in the day that counts today. The Rap influences are a bit off here, and the song is better in the chorus rather than the verses, due to the singing there. A great and explicitly sexual tune to listen to. It is trashy Pop Music, but it sounds sweet and awesome for what this is. The singing may be drenched in autotune and other sound effects, but this works well. Good, although not as good as the first song.

3. Dreams features Mark “Spike” Stent. It begins with an electric acoustic guitar and sounds good. Some sad and melancholy string sections are present briefly, before this tune enters into a quite good and catchy listen with pounding beats and instrumentation to boot. In any case, this odd tune does sound intricate, interesting and musically detailed. The sounds and instrumentation suit these girls voices perfectly. The music is good enough to be heard in full. That is still far better than anything your average celebrity with a laptop does today. In the midsection, there are some trippy and multitracked delayed vocals and this is followed by keyboards. A real trip, and certainly worth listening to. The strings then appear briefly, before returning to the surreal and detailed chorus. All in all, All Saints could sing to a fantastic backing track. A very good listen, it wraps up with some excellent sounds and beats, with some electric guitar as well. Top.

4. Distance features Jim Abbiss begins with some more crisp electric-acoustic guitar and has some soothing vocals. It launches straight into a delicious-sounding Pop song that has some gorgeous and excellent arrangements. Indeed, if this album needs a description, it would be the best Dream Pop from the year 2000. This song is another excellent listen with great singing, wah-wah textures and electronic beats to match. A gorgeously majestic tune, the 21st century got really started around this release. All in all, a really powerful statement. It is fairly clear that both women and men are equals in the world, and this album is a good representation of that which works on a record. In any case, this music is a colourful, artistic and catchy listen that sounds really awesome, and kicks the proverbial. A fresh, fun and exciting tune to hear and enjoy. It begins to wrap up with multitracked vocals, piano and gorgeous sounds. It finishes with some awesome vocals and acoustic guitar. Decent.

5. Black Coffee features Mark “Spike” Stent. It enters into a tune with digital liquid Roland TB-303 styled sounds and singing, and quickly enters into a surreal and tasty Pop Music adventure with plenty of attention to detail. There is a spacey breakdown, followed by the second set of verses. If you need a great song to drink black coffee with no sugar in the morning, this is your go-to point. Again, better than expected. Some of the album reviewing critics slammed this album for being too unoriginal, but this is far from the case as the ideas and sounds are quite original, for the most part. Some spacey sounds are present in the midsection, followed by soothing vocal harmonies and singing that is fantastic. This is a brilliant measure of surreal and fine Pop Music from the year 2000 that, quite simply, works a treat. This is a fine and brilliant listen, and the mixture of singing and electronic textured sounds is awesome. Towards the end are some cool vocals over a different-sounding section of music. This wraps up just before five minutes have passed.

6. Whoopin’ Over You begins with some treated bongos, and enters into a weird-sounding piece of music. The verses follow, which have power, importance and feminine lyrics and sounds to match. These four girls definitely sound great on this album, regardless of whether autotune was used on their voices or not. The whole song sounds absolutely wonderful, just like a great mixture of female Pop and EDM sensibilities. Nonetheless, this works extremely well and sounds fresh, interesting and fun to this very day. The chorus in particular is really very catchy to listen to. A really thrilling and interesting listen, this music seriously will impress you. The lyrics are fairly ordinary, but all the same, this does sound very good. A very pleasant and sweet listen from start to finish. The instrumentation throughout sounds great.

7. I Feel You features Dillon Gallagher & Gavin Griffiths, Femi Fem and Stuart Zender. It begins with acoustic guitars and fragments of sound, before launching into a stripped-down and beat-based tune that sounds extremely cool. This music is extremely tranquil, lovely and beautiful for Pop Music to listen to. This is delicious and gorgeously produced and mixed. All Saints obviously knew what worked for them musically. This is a good listen that goes on for five and a half minutes throughout. This is a good, but rather forgettable song. Sure, the music on this album definitely has its moments, it’s just not perfect as such. In any case, if you are someone who needs some girl power magic set to music, this is a very good place to start. This also has a touch of Disco Music to this, but in a 21st-century context. All in all, a good song that honestly needs shortening. Still, one can sit through it but it needs some patience to do so. The second half has some fantastic harmonies and singing, which sounds top. Eventually, this song begins to wrap up with electronic textures galore and pleasant harmonies, before finishing with a violin section. Nice.

8. Surrender features Mark “Spike” Stent. It begins with some clean guitars, maracas and some acoustic guitars as well. Psychedelic textures, loaded with delay enter on this song. This launches into a love song from a lady’s perspective which sounds really quite impressive. A really sweet and interesting song about getting it on and making love. The music and textures throughout are absolutely amazing and nicely deployed for the All Saints girls to sing along with. In any case, this music is pleasantly fantastic. Again, this song likely could have benefitted from trimming the length down a bit, but still, it is an awesome listen throughout. The tune is good but the length of the track, being over five minutes long, drags it down somewhat. Bear in mind, this is Pop Music per se. There are beeps and bleeps in the second half, along with harmonies before the chorus returns. In any case, this is a very pretty and awesome song. There is no denying that this music has some genuine appeal, however. A really cool and interesting song to listen to. Worth hearing, and very awesome, despite the length here.

9. Ha Ha begins with some interesting beats and is not a good song from the start. Sadly. This has no real appeal and sounds like All Saints were asked to do a wannabe R&B tune, rather than something better suited to their music and personalities. There is nothing worth hearing here, and ironically, this tune was a single from this album. You can skip ahead at this point, this isn’t the greatest song ever. Downright disappointing, this tune needs to be jettisoned from this album. Seriously, it is very lacking musically. It also goes on for too long, once again. An ordinary song that is just a joke and rubbish. The lyrics also don’t make any sense throughout. This is definitely not worth your time and drags the rest of a very good album down musically. It finally concludes after four minutes, not decent.

10. Love is Love is even worse than before, sounding like a Christina Aguilera imitation. Think Genie In A Bottle and you are there. This poor imitation of that Pop song makes one wonder if Christina Aguilera should get the lawyers ready to sue All Saints. This is a joke of a song, and once again, you may wish to skip ahead by this point. The sounds and singing do not sound like this is a naturally good mix, it sounds like forced filler. Sure, there have been worse moments in music history than this, but it sounds uninspired and is obviously designed to put some minutes onto this LP. The music is a bad Salsa impression. Nothing special about this song takes your attention. If you want a real love song, go and check out The Beatles music instead. A very average tune. Very unimpressive music.

11. Ready, Willing and Able features Marcellus (Marc Vada) Fernandes and begins with some interesting electronics, acoustic guitars and crickets at night sampled. This eventually launches into an electronic ballad that is a lot better than the previous track, but it is still filler and quite honestly, not that memorable or good. This is just another Pop Music album at the end of the day. In any case, this is certainly listenable, although this album has been called a Madonna Ray Of Light (1998) imitation. Regardless, this tune is an interesting one. This is a rather average tune, but it still has its place. A three-minute Pop Music ballad with fine attention to detail, this is okay. But Pop Music has done better, both before and since this album was released. It ends with a fade out and brass sections to match.

12. Saints & Sinners features London and Marcellus (Marc Vada) Fernandes. It is the final song and begins with some truly awful singing. Some instrumentation enters, and this tune launches into a rip-off of The Beatles and sampling Bomb The Bass. This is a terrible song to listen to, why did the creators of this album make such an awful tune to listen to? In any case, hit stop and go and do something else. The album ends on a sour note, and the length of it could have been cut in half for flow’s sake. Girl groups have done far better than this tune, and this track totally destroys the album as such. There is very little musically good to speak of in this song. In any case, this crawls to the end and if you are still here, you have patience indeed to get through albums such as this one. A drag on the rest of the album. You’ll be glad when this is over.

This is an okay album. It’s not phenomenally great but just okay. Pure Shores is the standout track on the album, which by itself needs to be on your Spotify playlist, as it is extremely beautiful music. The rest of the album, especially the final track, is a shot in the foot musically and does not give any decent music impressions throughout. Should you listen to this album? If you want dreamscape Pop Music then this may appeal to you, but most people will not want to hear this, apart from the Pure Shores track.

Could be better.

6/10